The Darling and Other Stories eBook

When next day after dinner I went to the Voltchaninovs,
the glass door into the garden was wide open.
I sat down on the terrace, expecting Genya every minute,
to appear from behind the flower-beds on the lawn,
or from one of the avenues, or that I should hear her
voice from the house. Then I walked into the drawing-room,
the dining-room. There was not a soul to be seen.
From the dining-room I walked along the long corridor
to the hall and back. In this corridor there
were several doors, and through one of them I heard
the voice of Lida:

“‘God . . . sent . . . a crow,’”
she said in a loud, emphatic voice, probably dictating—­“’God
sent a crow a piece of cheese . . . . A crow
. . . a piece of cheese.’ . . . Who’s
there?” she called suddenly, hearing my steps.

“It’s I.”

“Ah! Excuse me, I cannot come out to you
this minute; I’m giving Dasha her lesson.”

“Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?”

“No, she went away with my sister this morning
to our aunt in the province of Penza. And in
the winter they will probably go abroad,” she
added after a pause. “’God sent . . . the
crow . . . a piece . . . of cheese.’ . . .
Have you written it?”

I went into the hall, and stared vacantly at the pond
and the village, and the sound reached me of “A
piece of cheese. . . . God sent the crow a piece
of cheese.”

And I went back by the way I had come here for the
first time—­ first from the yard into the
garden past the house, then into the avenue of lime-trees.
. . . At this point I was overtaken by a small
boy who gave me a note:

“I told my sister everything and she insists
on my parting from you,” I read. “I
could not wound her by disobeying. God will give
you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew
how bitterly my mother and I are crying!”

Then there was the dark fir avenue, the broken-down
fence. . . . On the field where then the rye
was in flower and the corncrakes were calling, now
there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope
there were bright green patches of winter corn.
A sober workaday feeling came over me and I felt ashamed
of all I had said at the Voltchaninovs’, and
felt bored with life as I had been before. When
I got home, I packed and set off that evening for Petersburg.

——­

I never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Not long
ago, on my way to the Crimea, I met Byelokurov in
the train. As before, he was wearing a jerkin
and an embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he was,
he replied that, God be praised, he was well.
We began talking. He had sold his old estate
and bought another smaller one, in the name of Liubov
Ivanovna. He could tell me little about the Voltchaninovs.
Lida, he said, was still living in Shelkovka and teaching
in the school; she had by degrees succeeded in gathering
round her a circle of people sympathetic to her who
made a strong party, and at the last election had
turned out Balagin, who had till then had the whole
district under his thumb. About Genya he only
told me that she did not live at home, and that he
did not know where she was.